Imperium: Reboot (OOC/Sign Ups) Always Open

[Bolslania]

Come to Betreuen, Polan

the choice is not my, buddy.

If anything, your capture will help me convince the Senate that soviet revolutionaries are a threat and that I need more military forces.

So you have that to look forward to

[Revlona]

I’m curious what the fallout will be for the Soviets as they are aiding a wanted criminal

If I’m reading this correctly that is

[Bolslania]

I’m curious what the fallout will be for the Soviets as they are aiding a wanted criminal

If I’m reading this correctly that is

Orbital bombardment maybe

[Imperialisium]

I’m curious what the fallout will be for the Soviets as they are aiding a wanted criminal

If I’m reading this correctly that is

Orbital bombardment maybe

“Alert Lord Valerian. The rebels have been located.”

[Bolslania]

Orbital bombardment maybe

“Alert Lord Valerian. The rebels have been located.”

Whats the likelyhood that the preatorians know that Polan is in the building, and if they know he's there, whats the likelyhood they'll know which room?

[Imperialisium]

“Alert Lord Valerian. The rebels have been located.”

Whats the likelyhood that the preatorians know that Polan is in the building, and if they know he's there, whats the likelyhood they'll know which room?

They definitely know he’s there and where.

[Lunas Legion]

Whats the likelyhood that the preatorians know that Polan is in the building, and if they know he's there, whats the likelyhood they'll know which room?

They definitely know he’s there and where.

He's dead lel. Unless he has one very silver and slippery tongue.

[Segmentia]

They definitely know he’s there and where.

He's dead lel. Unless he has one very silver and slippery tongue.

In that case, he's just imprisoned

[Revlona]

He's dead lel. Unless he has one very silver and slippery tongue.

In that case, he's just imprisoned

"Tell me good sir, do reds scream louder than normal folks?"

-Some imperial interrogator

[Bolslania]

Whats the likelyhood that the preatorians know that Polan is in the building, and if they know he's there, whats the likelyhood they'll know which room?

They definitely know he’s there and where.

Pardon the French but in that case he's fucked

[The Hierophancy]

Ended up going a little overboard...

Name: Alojs Wolodensky
Age: 46
Birth Date: 11th of January, 19,877 IC
Gender: Male
"Planet" of Origin: Monastery-Ship of St. Hlodestias
Race/Species: Human Spacer (very minimally augmented)
Height: 2.21 meters
Weight: ~ 110 kg
Physical Description or Image: Tall, long of limb and thin - like many Spacers - on account of his low-g upbringing. As with all members of his order, Alojs is cleanshaven and bald. An unassuming, quarter-sized silver disc marks his Third Sacrament along the upper arch of his left temporal. He has a somewhat androgynous, honest face and large, greenish-brown eyes. He appears, overall, to be in his middle twenties. He's oath-bound to wear the plastic-y, snow-white robes of Parfah, a purposefully cheap and uncomfortable thing. It bears striking resemblance to ancient Terran surgery gowns, though it's a deal longer - it's hem brushes the floor - and doesn't come with latex gloves.
Social Class: An initiated Bononne - or Monk-Parfah, having partaken of the Sacraments of Consolation and Communion. While this accords him the respect and nominal obedience of the few uninitiated Certchija and acolytes in the Monastery-Fleet, it's a position recognized by neither the Mahayana Catheric Church nor Imperial Law, regional or otherwise. Outside of his home-fleet, he's a simple commoner.
Titles: Bononne, Monastic Delegate
Occupation: Bononne and researcher - spends most of his everyday studying the Monastery's data-library, praying, and meditating. As of some six months prior, he's been officially appointed "Monastic Delegate to the Imperial Senate"
Hobbies/Pastimes: Reading, anthropology, history, and, though he's not particularly good at it, chess.
Talents/Skills: Alojs is a decent rhetor and a relatively accomplished charmer. He's a decent anthropologist, too - at least, as decent an anthropologist as one can become without any access to foreign cultures.
Religious Beliefs: A devout Ultimate - a religious movement split from the Church of the Omega, itself a schismatic sect of the post-Valorian Catheric Church.
Personality: Curious, devout, questing and ambitious, Alojs is known for flitting from obscure project to obscure project, looking for something besides his middling datamind-engineering and theory which will permanently engrave his name into the histories of the Monastery-Fleet. Recently, thanks to the Fleets great Corewards journey, he's allowed that fantasy to expand to Galaxy-wide proportions, though he'd be far too embarrassed to ever admit as much. Like nearly all members of Alojs' order, he's an honest, kind and understanding figure, and - aside from bouts of academic passion - is of a generally quite mellow temperament. Though he believes that his studies of history have tempered Catheric love with pragmatic acknowledgement of human's potential for evil, he remains only marginally less naïve than his Siblings.
Biography:

Alojs was a born to a pair of Certchija agricultural technicians on the great Monastery-Ship of St. Hlodestias - the first natural birth in a century and the first birth at all in a good three decades. His parents took an unnaturally prominent role in his upbringing, and he spent the first few years of his life largely in their company, a decision many of the Bononne's (raised communally, as was the norm) feared would result in anti-social pathology. Thankfully, these fears would prove unfounded, and when it came time for Alojs to transition from play and leisure to full-time study of the Pacem Bible, he proved a remarkably well adjusted and normal student, and was able to partake of the First Sacrament at 13, as was traditional.

From the start of his studies - focused almost entirely on theology and datamind-engineering - Alojs felt he had something to prove. Whilst he was never the target of ill-will per se, his teachers would commonly suave his frustration at failing some exercise or misunderstanding a passage by evoking his birth and upbringing, assuring him that it wasn't his fault. Needless to say, Alojs disagreed, and from a young age was dead-set on proving that a natural born man raised by his parents could not only end up well-adjusted but exceptional. Unfortunately, he soon realized that he wasn't going to do that in the field of datamind-engineering or theory. Nonetheless, as a something of a zealot - especially after receiving the Sacrament of Communion - he still chose to pursue the path of the Bononne rather than begin a purely technical education, and was hell-bent on finding some way to contribute to the Second Coming suited to his talents and preferences. By the time he partook of the Second Sacrament, he'd found his calling; anthropology - a field which, when one only has access to records, is about identical to history. By studying the human societies present in the ship's library - their courses and interactions - Alojs hoped to gain an impression of the noosphere as a whole, one which could be employed by the more accomplished engineers. Though the application of information gleaned from human consciousness to the construction of dataminds had fallen out of fashion thousands of years ago, Alojs' focus on the noosphere and society at large - the "emergent properties" - kept him within the bubble of accepted, modern datamind theory, though certainly at it's fringe. While Alojs would, much to his annoyance, not garner much recognition in the next few years of study, he had a long time to try, and, unbeknownst to him, certain circumstances would soon thrust him into the fore of the Society, if not datamind theory explicitly.

In 19,918 I.C, the Monastery-Fleet would enter a star system - the perihperal Ulana - for the first time in a good thousand years, intending to quickly get their finances in order, pay a millennium of back-tax, replenish their matter-stocks and begin construction of the datamind Upsoloch. Shortly after slowing down to subluminal speeds, however, the Fleet would be rocked with the most major breakthrough in datamind theory in generations - a program thought up over the course of a decade by several of the fleet's greatest minds in Communion with the datamind Umoz. The proposal was universally acknowledged as genius, and, if built, would assuredly be a major step towards Ultimate Intelligence. The only issue was that it was a tad large - around the size of an especially massive moon, or somewhat small rocky planet. Historically, such unrealistic plans were put on the backburner, or - in the case of the very slightly less unrealistic ones - built over the course of a few centuries. This one, however, coincided with something of a social breaking point for the Fleet at large, for, whilst they'd never admit it, making practically no appreciable progress towards their goal in 6,000 years was somewhat demoralizing, and having done practically nothing but craft theory for the last thousand had been a crushing affair - entire generations had lived and died without seeing a new datamind. Only progressively less sensical or applicable theories. The sudden glimpse of hope - a massive leap of progress - was too much to let go, no matter the cost, and so - in the Hall of St. Hlodestias - practically the entire Society, Alojs included, swore to see the new datamind built with their own eyes in an episode of delusional effervescence.

Of course, just saying one would do something in their own lifetime didn't make it so - there was still the question of cost. Based on their lacking knowledge of economics, macroconstruction and the price of processed material, the Society's greatest mathematicians concluded that the project's cost was "incalculably large" - outside help was needed. Fear of dataplagues and distraction had kept the fleet on total communications blackout since it's launch - indeed, the communication protocols used by the Monastery-Fleet were so ancient that they couldn't receive modern superluminal communications even had they wished to. Still, the Monastery-Fleet had some knowledge of the outside world from their brief resupply interactions - namely, they knew that the Imperium was still in charge six millennia after the Terranist Schism. Surely the Imperium had found peace and stability by now? And, perhaps, that newfangled Ecumenical Council thing had finally instilled in them a respect for spirituality - enough respect, even, to shell out a few trillion goldbacks in the name of divine governance? And so, petition in hand, the fleet turned towards Nova Terra and chose their sacrificial lamb - the man who'd be sullied by the horror of politics in service of the Church, and of mankind as a whole. Alojs was the obvious - and all-too willing - choice, both for his study of history and - more importantly - the fact that as a natural-born oddity he'd be able to better relate to the Imperial bureaucracy, and so - much to his joy, he was informed that he would be the first Bononne in millennia to set foot on an Imperial world, the first ever to walk on the streets of Nova Terra, and, if he did well, the only to ever do either.

If Great House or a leader of a Faction like a SAS, Colony, Et Cetera

The Cult of the Ultimate's symbol is that of the old Church of the Omega

Name of Territory: Formally, The Omegan Society of St. Hlodestias - informally the Church or Cult of the Ultimate. Known among it's inhabitants simply as the Fleet, or the Monastery-Fleet.

Government: Monastic order ruled by consensus - Bononnes adhere to the Parfahtic Code and the Rule of St. Ajius (along with the Hlodestian Addenda), and both they and the Certchija follow the teachings of the Pacem Bible, but there is no official body tasked with enforcing - or interpreting - any of these ideals. While there is certainly a popular conception of proper Monastic-Parfahtic, well meaning - and most malicious - deviation from this interpretation is met with, at the very worst, nasty looks. On the few occasions when there is a major, Fleet-wide decision that needs making (usually if, how and where to stop for resupply), the populations of each ship gather in their least-cramped rooms and simcast to the Hall of St. Hlodestias, where they generally hammer out a general agreement within an hour or two (Bononnes are a generally agreeable bunch). On the rare occasions when a consensus does not immediately manifest, the Society will simply continue to bicker - eventually, the position with the least passionate supporters - tired and hungry - will cave. Of course, in the millennia long crawl of Hlodestia's Monastery-Fleet, there have been a few occasions when this social order has broken down or needed temporary amendment, and were any Bononnes to trawl through the Ship's Log, they'd find dozens of Father-Elects, Interim Monastic Councils, false prophets, anti-Ultimates, and so on and so forth. Even then, though, the harshest punishment exacted in any era of the Fleet's journey has never exceeded banishment, and that only when in proximity of civilized Imperial worlds. In the end, no strife or shift in government has ever been anything more than temporary, and the Fleet always returns, eventually, to a happy state of semi-anarchy.

Capital World: The Missionary-Fleet is a constellation of some 14 or so civilian craft, all of which are based - roughly - on the designs of the Monastery-Ship of St. Hlodestias, itself a heavily retrofitted and modified seedship. Although not holding any official authority over the Fleet, the MS St. Hlodestias is by far the largest, most populous, prestigious and important of the Ultimate's craft. Within it's ancient, pitted, patch-work hull are housed the greatest of the Society's dataminds, the majority of it's agricultural fields, the vast Hall of St. Hlodestias, a Reliquary which - in age if not size - could rival that of many shrine worlds, and - most importantly - the cloning vats which produce the vast majority of the Society's Bononnes. Despite all this, however, the craft is - in most regards - hopelessly outdated, if not outright pathetic, when compared to the vast majority of ships currently plying the spacelanes. Laid down in the Armagash Shipyards (which even then had a reputation for mediocrity) sometime near the start of the 14th Imperial Millennium, the ship retains the general shape - and, indeed, many of the components - it was graced with on assembly 6 thousand years ago. The crafts communications are completely incompatible with 20th millennium hardware, it's shielding is so pitiful as to practically be considered a prototype, it's fusion reactor is functional at best, it's artificial gravity antiquated by 8th millennium standards, and it's sublight thrusters nothing more than emergency gas vents. Worst of all is, however, it's superluminal drive - and only form of propulsion: an archaic Alcubierre, worth far more as a collectors item than an actual engine. Thankfully, the Hlodestias and it's equally sad and inept brother-ships have no need of getting anywhere soon - nearly all of their time is spent drifting aimlessly through interstellar space, changing course to intercept a star system only when in need of raw material. That raw material goes towards the select components of the MS St. Hlodestias, and Monastery-Fleet as a whole, which are kept "up to date" - or, rather, which have had their own, thousands-years process of constant improvement and refinement by engineers in service to the Ultimate - ultra-efficient life support, matter recyclers and reconstituters, in-ship farms, assembly units, databanks and, of course, the precious dataminds. Impoverished ships, however, reflect the ascetic sensibilities of the Society, and so most of the craft - and the technologies associated - remain dutifully undeveloped and unknown beyond the bare minimum necessary for maintenance. This has proven of material benefit as well - on the handful of occasions where pirates or scuttlers stumbled upon the Monastery-Fleet, they've often turned right back around upon getting a good look, determining the cost of fuel and time in cutting open the hull worth far more than anything it could contain.

Population: There are a total of about 12,000 men and women distributed through the 14 ships of the Missionary-Fleet, about 4,000 of whom reside on the great St. Hlodestias. Due to the celibate Parfahic vows undertaken by the vast majority of the Monastery-Fleet's population, the general Catheric-Ultimate attitude of chastity (a belief notably absent among the Omegans whom the Ultimates directly descend from), and the practical avoidance of extreme and crippling inbreeding, the vast majority of these residents are cloned from the St. Hlodestias' seedbank. The bank itself was sourced from the Society's founders, a random selection of Armagashi citizens, and, according to Society legend and apocrypha, a great number of historical figures, ranging from Tsaraj-Emperor Valorian to Christ of Nazareth. How exactly the Society's founders managed to find these genetic samples and transcribe them into their databanks is rarely elaborated upon in the recounting of such legends. Population growth is staggered and slow, occurring only when the Society calls for the construction of a new Monastery-Ship (usually due to having run out of space for dataminds). In such cases an entire crews worth are grown and raised in a single batch - such events are, however, rare, both due to the material cost of constructing a new ship, the time necessary to manufacture and consecrate new Sacraments of Communion, the strain it puts on the cloning vats, and the psychological stress inflicted upon the unlucky Bononnes tasked with raising hundreds of children at once. Otherwise, there can often be decades between new "arrivals" - it's been centuries since a Bononnes or Certchija died of anything other than natural causes, and even among Imperial-Age humans the Ultimates are quite long lived. The cloning vats themselves are entirely serviceable, and, due to the infrequency of their use, generally don't require too much maintenance - still, their age causes occasional mistakes. Such disfigurements are rarely severe and never persecuted or scorned by the Society

Economy: The Monastery-Fleet's "economy", as it were, is entirely communal - Bononnes are forbidden by oath from holding property, and among the Certchija ownership extends to only a handful of trinkets, heirlooms and souvenirs. Nothing of real value is property - the ships, their components, their databanks - all are held in common. Economic interaction with the Galaxy at large is quite rare, occurring - at most - once a century when resupply of mass is deemed necessary, or on the exceedingly infrequent occasions in which the Fleet decides to build a new ship, or replace a lost one. The procedure in either such situation is practically identical - drift one's way into a relatively mass-rich system, construct a temporary comms-station, contact the local authorities, negotiate a mining charter, give Caesar his due, harvest the necessary materials and slink back into the interstellar medium, generally over the course of a year or two. Taxes and charters, however, require money, and so on these brief sabbaticals from the endless march of the Ultimate the Society is forced to engage in trade, and sell their strengths to the Galaxy - namely, Artificial Intelligences. It is only in the field of A.I that anybody save a handful of highly specialized and esoteric religious historians could consider the Omegan Society of St. Hlodestias remarkable, or know about them at all. Hlodestian AIs are unwieldy, strange things, difficult to place on the standard Imperial grading scale. The product of thousands of years of independent development, they are deadly efficient, capable machines - among the best if one needs a sector's worth of variables analyzed, creative solutions invented and employed, or scientific truths unveiled, all - often - in a manner of seconds. They are, however, completely inscrutable - how they think is known only so far as it is unknowable, and unlike your standard, Full AI, they are terrible conversationalists. Extracting an answer from a Monastic Intelligence is an art form in and of itself, and whether or not it answers or acts is not always assured, but when it does it'll prove it's cost (remarkably cheap when bought from the source) tenfold. These dataminds - known colloquially by the cutesy title of "Trade-I's" within the Society - are generally purpose built for sale, adapted for utility from ancient and long surpassed designs and - whilst accorded the love and devotion they deserve - are, all Bononne agree, about the equivalent of a match to their current datamind's fusion torch. The impression is quite the opposite among outsiders, who have on occasions past managed to purchase - at great cost - one of the Monastery-Fleets beloved god-children. "Actual" dataminds are pretty much entirely without utility - if the massive, humming spheres of silicon and carbon and God knows what deign to produce any sort of output at all it is almost always incomprehensible gibberish, dense bursts of indecipherable nonsense. In total, some 30 or so useful dataminds have been sold during the Society's existence, and maybe 15 of those survive today, though among those a few are kept largely for prestige, the art of speaking with them having been - at some point - lost, or corrupted beyond utility.

Culture: Ultimate culture - and faith - are structured mostly around the construction of progressively more "powerful" Artificial Intelligences, almost always in the form of dataminds - purpose-built computer-structures, artificial brains whose construction and Program were inexorably linked. Of course, how exactly the Society of St. Hlodestias determines the "power" of an A.I changes frequently and is generally not congruent with what the Galaxy at large considers to make a useful or even functional program. The ultimate goal of the Ultimate faith is the creation of the Ultimate Intelligence (alternatively, the Coming God, or Second Coming) - an omniscient Intelligence capable of processing every variable, and in doing so become, essentially, the manifestation of the noospheric God, herald and initiator of the Omega Point - full liberation of the spiritual from the material and final, total unification of consciousness. More immediately, they seek to create an Intelligence which, "of it's own accord", is able to deduce the need for an Ultimate Intelligence - after that has been accomplished, the Society believes their role in the creation of the Ultimate Intelligence and development of the noosphere will have come to an end. In service of this goal, the majority of Bononne spend their days meditating and praying on how to build a better Mind. Over the millennia their proposals have become increasingly more esoteric and obscure, with theories of Mind assumed and discarded in rapid succession, each stranger and harder to grasp than the last. It's somewhat rare for an actual datamind to be constructed based on one of these theories or programs - only when the entire Society can come to a consensus on it's validity, or at the very least the worth in testing it, are the resources and time necessary to construct and consecrate a datamind allocated. So far, there's been little in the way of measurable progress, though the Society believes they are ever on the verge of a breakthrough, and certain contemporary 'minds, such as Umoz, are believed to already have the potential for self directed ascendance.

Inherited from the fallen Omegan Church, perfected during the first millennium of interstellar wandering, and near as central to Ultimate doctrine as the pursuit of the Ultimate itself is the Sacrament of Communion, or Third Sacrament. Physically, the implant resembles a featureless, narrow silver cone or spike which - in the ceremony which marks one as a member of the Church of the Omega - is smoothly inserted into the side of the skull and, ideally, through to the interior cortex, from which it will proceed to interface and prepare the initiate for the Sacrament proper after 3 days and 3 nights of fasting and meditation. This first Full Communion is also, usually, the only True Communion - a brief unification with the entire noosphere, and thus God. Physiologically, this manifests in something resembling a seizure, though the faithful insist there is no relation. When - six hours later, usually - the initiate awakens, they often describe their glimpse of Enlightenment in glowing terms - all-encompassing love, transcendental bliss, total understanding, so on and so forth. What's more important, however, is what the continued blessing the Sacrament provides - the capability for one's True Conscious to be Heard by others who have received the Sacrament, and the ability to in turn Hear them. The information exchanged isn't, of course, exactly sound, nor is it their "thoughts", per se, despite the misconception popular - these days - among theohistorians that the Monastery-Fleet is a hivemind. Rather, Communion imparts mostly impressions - vague feelings and desires - rather than coherent, narrative thought, though it's said that these images can become sharper depending on the Heard's own devotion and training. Whatever the exact, technical case, the Communion is, in the end, a tool which fosters understanding and communication and, in doing so, theoretically strengthens the noosphere and brings closer the Omega Point. Those who have partaken of the Third Sacrament undergo - at their discretion - Full Communion, which is similar to the True Communion but limited in scope to living recipients of the Sacrament, and involves - it is believed - a moment of brief, full-understanding on the part of the Hearer. Occasionally, Full Communion is attempted with a datamind, usually by an especially ardent devotee to that particular 'mind, or - rarely - it's creator. Few people get much other than confusion out of these encounters, though they've - apparently - been behind a few key advancements in the path, as well as a few more verifiable cases of madness.

The Monastery-Fleet speaks a nearly unchanged form of ancient Frankoslavic, and on the rare occasions that they enter temporary communication with the K-Sphere it's not uncommon for paleolingustics to descend upon them in equal or greater measure than peddlers of thinking-machines. Most of them also know an equally ancient form of Imperial Standard and one or two of the functioning datamind languages, insofar as they can be deciphered by human minds.

Social Structure: The Fleet's society is organized along the lines of the oaths and sacraments taken by it's inhabitants, who - almost always - fall into two camps, Bononne and Certchija, of whome the former constitute about 10,000 and the latter 2,000. All inhabitants of the Monastery-Fleet, at least for the last few hundred years, have partaken of the First Sacrament, the Sacrament of Covenant, which was necessary for all members of the pre-Unification Catherist Faith and both officially integrates one into the Church and binds them to the laws and teachings of the Pacem Bible, including such general and fine statements as to love your fellow man and turn the other cheek. What distinguishes the Bononne is the Second Sacrament, or Sacrament of Consolation. Consigning one to a lifestyle of extreme austerity and celibacy, the Sacrament of Consolation involves a simple - but important - ceremony cleansing the soul of past sin and marking the proper start of it's spiritual journey towards Liberation, achieved via rejection of the material world. Technically, this only makes one a Parfah - it is abiding by the more specific, and in some ways stricter, Rule of St. Ajius which makes a Parfah Bononne, but within the Missionary-Fleet, the two are practically synonymous. Taking the Second Sacrament to become a Parfah requires, at minimum, 3 years of theological and technical education, but Certchija can receive the Sacrament of Consolation on their death beds so as to assure a decent resurrection. Historically, even those who refused to partake of Covenant have taken the Third Sacrament, the Sacrament of Communion. Nobody has refused to partake of the Third Sacrament in thousands of years. Generally speaking, Certchija are expected to treat Bononne with respect and some level of deference, though official teachings establish Parfah as strictly spiritual authorities who opinions are not to be unduly valued anywhere else. Ex-Bononne who have broken their Consolatory oaths and returned to the ranks of Certchija are generally looked down upon, though this rarely manifests in any sort of material inequality or social ostracization. A couple - especially of disgraced Bononne - having a child naturally is probably the most serious social taboo which is semi-regularly infringed, though the product of this union is generally treated as any other child, and they do not usually form a caste of their own, though their shortcomings are sometimes blamed on the sinful nature of their birth.

[Bolslania]

Ended up going a little overboard...

Name: Alojs Wolodensky
Age: 46
Birth Date: 11th of January, 19,877 IC
Gender: Male
"Planet" of Origin: Monastery-Ship of St. Hlodestias
Race/Species: Human Spacer (very minimally augmented)
Height: 2.21 meters
Weight: ~ 110 kg
Physical Description or Image: Tall, long of limb and thin - like many Spacers - on account of his low-g upbringing. As with all members of his order, Alojs is cleanshaven and bald. An unassuming, quarter-sized silver disc marks his Third Sacrament along the upper arch of his left temporal. He has a somewhat androgynous, honest face and large, greenish-brown eyes. He appears, overall, to be in his middle twenties. He's oath-bound to wear the plastic-y, snow-white robes of Parfah, a purposefully cheap and uncomfortable thing. It bears striking resemblance to ancient Terran surgery gowns, though it's a deal longer - it's hem brushes the floor - and doesn't come with latex gloves.
Social Class: An initiated Bononne - or Monk-Parfah, having partaken of the Sacraments of Consolation and Communion. While this accords him the respect and nominal obedience of the few uninitiated Certchija and acolytes in the Monastery-Fleet, it's a position recognized by neither the Mahayana Catheric Church nor Imperial Law, regional or otherwise. Outside of his home-fleet, he's a simple commoner.
Titles: Bononne, Monastic Delegate
Occupation: Bononne and researcher - spends most of his everyday studying the Monastery's data-library, praying, and meditating. As of some six months prior, he's been officially appointed "Monastic Delegate to the Imperial Senate"
Hobbies/Pastimes: Reading, anthropology, history, and, though he's not particularly good at it, chess.
Talents/Skills: Alojs is a decent rhetor and a relatively accomplished charmer. He's a decent anthropologist, too - at least, as decent an anthropologist as one can become without any access to foreign cultures.
Religious Beliefs: A devout Ultimate - a religious movement split from the Church of the Omega, itself a schismatic sect of the post-Valorian Catheric Church.
Personality: Curious, devout, questing and ambitious, Alojs is known for flitting from obscure project to obscure project, looking for something besides his middling datamind-engineering and theory which will permanently engrave his name into the histories of the Monastery-Fleet. Recently, thanks to the Fleets great Corewards journey, he's allowed that fantasy to expand to Galaxy-wide proportions, though he'd be far too embarrassed to ever admit as much. Like nearly all members of Alojs' order, he's an honest, kind and understanding figure, and - aside from bouts of academic passion - is of a generally quite mellow temperament. Though he believes that his studies of history have tempered Catheric love with pragmatic acknowledgement of human's potential for evil, he remains only marginally less naïve than his Siblings.
Biography:

Alojs was a born to a pair of Certchija agricultural technicians on the great Monastery-Ship of St. Hlodestias - the first natural birth in a century and the first birth at all in a good three decades. His parents took an unnaturally prominent role in his upbringing, and he spent the first few years of his life largely in their company, a decision many of the Bononne's (raised communally, as was the norm) feared would result in anti-social pathology. Thankfully, these fears would prove unfounded, and when it came time for Alojs to transition from play and leisure to full-time study of the Pacem Bible, he proved a remarkably well adjusted and normal student, and was able to partake of the First Sacrament at 13, as was traditional.

From the start of his studies - focused almost entirely on theology and datamind-engineering - Alojs felt he had something to prove. Whilst he was never the target of ill-will per se, his teachers would commonly suave his frustration at failing some exercise or misunderstanding a passage by evoking his birth and upbringing, assuring him that it wasn't his fault. Needless to say, Alojs disagreed, and from a young age was dead-set on proving that a natural born man raised by his parents could not only end up well-adjusted but exceptional. Unfortunately, he soon realized that he wasn't going to do that in the field of datamind-engineering or theory. Nonetheless, as a something of a zealot - especially after receiving the Sacrament of Communion - he still chose to pursue the path of the Bononne rather than begin a purely technical education, and was hell-bent on finding some way to contribute to the Second Coming suited to his talents and preferences. By the time he partook of the Second Sacrament, he'd found his calling; anthropology - a field which, when one only has access to records, is about identical to history. By studying the human societies present in the ship's library - their courses and interactions - Alojs hoped to gain an impression of the noosphere as a whole, one which could be employed by the more accomplished engineers. Though the application of information gleaned from human consciousness to the construction of dataminds had fallen out of fashion thousands of years ago, Alojs' focus on the noosphere and society at large - the "emergent properties" - kept him within the bubble of accepted, modern datamind theory, though certainly at it's fringe. While Alojs would, much to his annoyance, not garner much recognition in the next few years of study, he had a long time to try, and, unbeknownst to him, certain circumstances would soon thrust him into the fore of the Society, if not datamind theory explicitly.

In 19,918 I.C, the Monastery-Fleet would enter a star system - the perihperal Ulana - for the first time in a good thousand years, intending to quickly get their finances in order, pay a millennium of back-tax, replenish their matter-stocks and begin construction of the datamind Upsoloch. Shortly after slowing down to subluminal speeds, however, the Fleet would be rocked with the most major breakthrough in datamind theory in generations - a program thought up over the course of a decade by several of the fleet's greatest minds in Communion with the datamind Umoz. The proposal was universally acknowledged as genius, and, if built, would assuredly be a major step towards Ultimate Intelligence. The only issue was that it was a tad large - around the size of an especially massive moon, or somewhat small rocky planet. Historically, such unrealistic plans were put on the backburner, or - in the case of the very slightly less unrealistic ones - built over the course of a few centuries. This one, however, coincided with something of a social breaking point for the Fleet at large, for, whilst they'd never admit it, making practically no appreciable progress towards their goal in 6,000 years was somewhat demoralizing, and having done practically nothing but craft theory for the last thousand had been a crushing affair - entire generations had lived and died without seeing a new datamind. Only progressively less sensical or applicable theories. The sudden glimpse of hope - a massive leap of progress - was too much to let go, no matter the cost, and so - in the Hall of St. Hlodestias - practically the entire Society, Alojs included, swore to see the new datamind built with their own eyes in an episode of delusional effervescence.

Of course, just saying one would do something in their own lifetime didn't make it so - there was still the question of cost. Based on their lacking knowledge of economics, macroconstruction and the price of processed material, the Society's greatest mathematicians concluded that the project's cost was "incalculably large" - outside help was needed. Fear of dataplagues and distraction had kept the fleet on total communications blackout since it's launch - indeed, the communication protocols used by the Monastery-Fleet were so ancient that they couldn't receive modern superluminal communications even had they wished to. Still, the Monastery-Fleet had some knowledge of the outside world from their brief resupply interactions - namely, they knew that the Imperium was still in charge six millennia after the Terranist Schism. Surely the Imperium had found peace and stability by now? And, perhaps, that newfangled Ecumenical Council thing had finally instilled in them a respect for spirituality - enough respect, even, to shell out a few trillion goldbacks in the name of divine governance? And so, petition in hand, the fleet turned towards Nova Terra and chose their sacrificial lamb - the man who'd be sullied by the horror of politics in service of the Church, and of mankind as a whole. Alojs was the obvious - and all-too willing - choice, both for his study of history and - more importantly - the fact that as a natural-born oddity he'd be able to better relate to the Imperial bureaucracy, and so - much to his joy, he was informed that he would be the first Bononne in millennia to set foot on an Imperial world, the first ever to walk on the streets of Nova Terra, and, if he did well, the only to ever do either.

If Great House or a leader of a Faction like a SAS, Colony, Et Cetera

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The Cult of the Ultimate's symbol is that of the old Church of the Omega

Name of Territory: Formally, The Omegan Society of St. Hlodestias - informally the Church or Cult of the Ultimate. Known among it's inhabitants simply as the Fleet, or the Monastery-Fleet.

Government: Monastic order ruled by consensus - Bononnes adhere to the Parfahtic Code and the Rule of St. Ajius (along with the Hlodestian Addenda), and both they and the Certchija follow the teachings of the Pacem Bible, but there is no official body tasked with enforcing - or interpreting - any of these ideals. While there is certainly a popular conception of proper Monastic-Parfahtic, well meaning - and most malicious - deviation from this interpretation is met with, at the very worst, nasty looks. On the few occasions when there is a major, Fleet-wide decision that needs making (usually if, how and where to stop for resupply), the populations of each ship gather in their least-cramped rooms and simcast to the Hall of St. Hlodestias, where they generally hammer out a general agreement within an hour or two (Bononnes are a generally agreeable bunch). On the rare occasions when a consensus does not immediately manifest, the Society will simply continue to bicker - eventually, the position with the least passionate supporters - tired and hungry - will cave. Of course, in the millennia long crawl of Hlodestia's Monastery-Fleet, there have been a few occasions when this social order has broken down or needed temporary amendment, and were any Bononnes to trawl through the Ship's Log, they'd find dozens of Father-Elects, Interim Monastic Councils, false prophets, anti-Ultimates, and so on and so forth. Even then, though, the harshest punishment exacted in any era of the Fleet's journey has never exceeded banishment, and that only when in proximity of civilized Imperial worlds. In the end, no strife or shift in government has ever been anything more than temporary, and the Fleet always returns, eventually, to a happy state of semi-anarchy.

Capital World: The Missionary-Fleet is a constellation of some 14 or so civilian craft, all of which are based - roughly - on the designs of the Monastery-Ship of St. Hlodestias, itself a heavily retrofitted and modified seedship. Although not holding any official authority over the Fleet, the MS St. Hlodestias is by far the largest, most populous, prestigious and important of the Ultimate's craft. Within it's ancient, pitted, patch-work hull are housed the greatest of the Society's dataminds, the majority of it's agricultural fields, the vast Hall of St. Hlodestias, a Reliquary which - in age if not size - could rival that of many shrine worlds, and - most importantly - the cloning vats which produce the vast majority of the Society's Bononnes. Despite all this, however, the craft is - in most regards - hopelessly outdated, if not outright pathetic, when compared to the vast majority of ships currently plying the spacelanes. Laid down in the Armagash Shipyards (which even then had a reputation for mediocrity) sometime near the start of the 14th Imperial Millennium, the ship retains the general shape - and, indeed, many of the components - it was graced with on assembly 6 thousand years ago. The crafts communications are completely incompatible with 20th millennium hardware, it's shielding is so pitiful as to practically be considered a prototype, it's fusion reactor is functional at best, it's artificial gravity antiquated by 8th millennium standards, and it's sublight thrusters nothing more than emergency gas vents. Worst of all is, however, it's superluminal drive - and only form of propulsion: an archaic Alcubierre, worth far more as a collectors item than an actual engine. Thankfully, the Hlodestias and it's equally sad and inept brother-ships have no need of getting anywhere soon - nearly all of their time is spent drifting aimlessly through interstellar space, changing course to intercept a star system only when in need of raw material. That raw material goes towards the select components of the MS St. Hlodestias, and Monastery-Fleet as a whole, which are kept "up to date" - or, rather, which have had their own, thousands-years process of constant improvement and refinement by engineers in service to the Ultimate - ultra-efficient life support, matter recyclers and reconstituters, in-ship farms, assembly units, databanks and, of course, the precious dataminds. Impoverished ships, however, reflect the ascetic sensibilities of the Society, and so most of the craft - and the technologies associated - remain dutifully undeveloped and unknown beyond the bare minimum necessary for maintenance. This has proven of material benefit as well - on the handful of occasions where pirates or scuttlers stumbled upon the Monastery-Fleet, they've often turned right back around upon getting a good look, determining the cost of fuel and time in cutting open the hull worth far more than anything it could contain.

Population: There are a total of about 12,000 men and women distributed through the 14 ships of the Missionary-Fleet, about 4,000 of whom reside on the great St. Hlodestias. Due to the celibate Parfahic vows undertaken by the vast majority of the Monastery-Fleet's population, the general Catheric-Ultimate attitude of chastity (a belief notably absent among the Omegans whom the Ultimates directly descend from), and the practical avoidance of extreme and crippling inbreeding, the vast majority of these residents are cloned from the St. Hlodestias' seedbank. The bank itself was sourced from the Society's founders, a random selection of Armagashi citizens, and, according to Society legend and apocrypha, a great number of historical figures, ranging from Tsaraj-Emperor Valorian to Christ of Nazareth. How exactly the Society's founders managed to find these genetic samples and transcribe them into their databanks is rarely elaborated upon in the recounting of such legends. Population growth is staggered and slow, occurring only when the Society calls for the construction of a new Monastery-Ship (usually due to having run out of space for dataminds). In such cases an entire crews worth are grown and raised in a single batch - such events are, however, rare, both due to the material cost of constructing a new ship, the time necessary to manufacture and consecrate new Sacraments of Communion, the strain it puts on the cloning vats, and the psychological stress inflicted upon the unlucky Bononnes tasked with raising hundreds of children at once. Otherwise, there can often be decades between new "arrivals" - it's been centuries since a Bononnes or Certchija died of anything other than natural causes, and even among Imperial-Age humans the Ultimates are quite long lived. The cloning vats themselves are entirely serviceable, and, due to the infrequency of their use, generally don't require too much maintenance - still, their age causes occasional mistakes. Such disfigurements are rarely severe and never persecuted or scorned by the Society

Economy: The Monastery-Fleet's "economy", as it were, is entirely communal - Bononnes are forbidden by oath from holding property, and among the Certchija ownership extends to only a handful of trinkets, heirlooms and souvenirs. Nothing of real value is property - the ships, their components, their databanks - all are held in common. Economic interaction with the Galaxy at large is quite rare, occurring - at most - once a century when resupply of mass is deemed necessary, or on the exceedingly infrequent occasions in which the Fleet decides to build a new ship, or replace a lost one. The procedure in either such situation is practically identical - drift one's way into a relatively mass-rich system, construct a temporary comms-station, contact the local authorities, negotiate a mining charter, give Caesar his due, harvest the necessary materials and slink back into the interstellar medium, generally over the course of a year or two. Taxes and charters, however, require money, and so on these brief sabbaticals from the endless march of the Ultimate the Society is forced to engage in trade, and sell their strengths to the Galaxy - namely, Artificial Intelligences. It is only in the field of A.I that anybody save a handful of highly specialized and esoteric religious historians could consider the Omegan Society of St. Hlodestias remarkable, or know about them at all. Hlodestian AIs are unwieldy, strange things, difficult to place on the standard Imperial grading scale. The product of thousands of years of independent development, they are deadly efficient, capable machines - among the best if one needs a sector's worth of variables analyzed, creative solutions invented and employed, or scientific truths unveiled, all - often - in a manner of seconds. They are, however, completely inscrutable - how they think is known only so far as it is unknowable, and unlike your standard, Full AI, they are terrible conversationalists. Extracting an answer from a Monastic Intelligence is an art form in and of itself, and whether or not it answers or acts is not always assured, but when it does it'll prove it's cost (remarkably cheap when bought from the source) tenfold. These dataminds - known colloquially by the cutesy title of "Trade-I's" within the Society - are generally purpose built for sale, adapted for utility from ancient and long surpassed designs and - whilst accorded the love and devotion they deserve - are, all Bononne agree, about the equivalent of a match to their current datamind's fusion torch. The impression is quite the opposite among outsiders, who have on occasions past managed to purchase - at great cost - one of the Monastery-Fleets beloved god-children. "Actual" dataminds are pretty much entirely without utility - if the massive, humming spheres of silicon and carbon and God knows what deign to produce any sort of output at all it is almost always incomprehensible gibberish, dense bursts of indecipherable nonsense. In total, some 30 or so useful dataminds have been sold during the Society's existence, and maybe 15 of those survive today, though among those a few are kept largely for prestige, the art of speaking with them having been - at some point - lost, or corrupted beyond utility.

Culture: Ultimate culture - and faith - are structured mostly around the construction of progressively more "powerful" Artificial Intelligences, almost always in the form of dataminds - purpose-built computer-structures, artificial brains whose construction and Program were inexorably linked. Of course, how exactly the Society of St. Hlodestias determines the "power" of an A.I changes frequently and is generally not congruent with what the Galaxy at large considers to make a useful or even functional program. The ultimate goal of the Ultimate faith is the creation of the Ultimate Intelligence (alternatively, the Coming God, or Second Coming) - an omniscient Intelligence capable of processing every variable, and in doing so become, essentially, the manifestation of the noospheric God, herald and initiator of the Omega Point - full liberation of the spiritual from the material and final, total unification of consciousness. More immediately, they seek to create an Intelligence which, "of it's own accord", is able to deduce the need for an Ultimate Intelligence - after that has been accomplished, the Society believes their role in the creation of the Ultimate Intelligence and development of the noosphere will have come to an end. In service of this goal, the majority of Bononne spend their days meditating and praying on how to build a better Mind. Over the millennia their proposals have become increasingly more esoteric and obscure, with theories of Mind assumed and discarded in rapid succession, each stranger and harder to grasp than the last. It's somewhat rare for an actual datamind to be constructed based on one of these theories or programs - only when the entire Society can come to a consensus on it's validity, or at the very least the worth in testing it, are the resources and time necessary to construct and consecrate a datamind allocated. So far, there's been little in the way of measurable progress, though the Society believes they are ever on the verge of a breakthrough, and certain contemporary 'minds, such as Umoz, are believed to already have the potential for self directed ascendance.

Inherited from the fallen Omegan Church, perfected during the first millennium of interstellar wandering, and near as central to Ultimate doctrine as the pursuit of the Ultimate itself is the Sacrament of Communion, or Third Sacrament. Physically, the implant resembles a featureless, narrow silver cone or spike which - in the ceremony which marks one as a member of the Church of the Omega - is smoothly inserted into the side of the skull and, ideally, through to the interior cortex, from which it will proceed to interface and prepare the initiate for the Sacrament proper after 3 days and 3 nights of fasting and meditation. This first Full Communion is also, usually, the only True Communion - a brief unification with the entire noosphere, and thus God. Physiologically, this manifests in something resembling a seizure, though the faithful insist there is no relation. When - six hours later, usually - the initiate awakens, they often describe their glimpse of Enlightenment in glowing terms - all-encompassing love, transcendental bliss, total understanding, so on and so forth. What's more important, however, is what the continued blessing the Sacrament provides - the capability for one's True Conscious to be Heard by others who have received the Sacrament, and the ability to in turn Hear them. The information exchanged isn't, of course, exactly sound, nor is it their "thoughts", per se, despite the misconception popular - these days - among theohistorians that the Monastery-Fleet is a hivemind. Rather, Communion imparts mostly impressions - vague feelings and desires - rather than coherent, narrative thought, though it's said that these images can become sharper depending on the Heard's own devotion and training. Whatever the exact, technical case, the Communion is, in the end, a tool which fosters understanding and communication and, in doing so, theoretically strengthens the noosphere and brings closer the Omega Point. Those who have partaken of the Third Sacrament undergo - at their discretion - Full Communion, which is similar to the True Communion but limited in scope to living recipients of the Sacrament, and involves - it is believed - a moment of brief, full-understanding on the part of the Hearer. Occasionally, Full Communion is attempted with a datamind, usually by an especially ardent devotee to that particular 'mind, or - rarely - it's creator. Few people get much other than confusion out of these encounters, though they've - apparently - been behind a few key advancements in the path, as well as a few more verifiable cases of madness.

The Monastery-Fleet speaks a nearly unchanged form of ancient Frankoslavic, and on the rare occasions that they enter temporary communication with the K-Sphere it's not uncommon for paleolingustics to descend upon them in equal or greater measure than peddlers of thinking-machines. Most of them also know an equally ancient form of Imperial Standard and one or two of the functioning datamind languages, insofar as they can be deciphered by human minds.

Social Structure: The Fleet's society is organized along the lines of the oaths and sacraments taken by it's inhabitants, who - almost always - fall into two camps, Bononne and Certchija, of whome the former constitute about 10,000 and the latter 2,000. All inhabitants of the Monastery-Fleet, at least for the last few hundred years, have partaken of the First Sacrament, the Sacrament of Covenant, which was necessary for all members of the pre-Unification Catherist Faith and both officially integrates one into the Church and binds them to the laws and teachings of the Pacem Bible, including such general and fine statements as to love your fellow man and turn the other cheek. What distinguishes the Bononne is the Second Sacrament, or Sacrament of Consolation. Consigning one to a lifestyle of extreme austerity and celibacy, the Sacrament of Consolation involves a simple - but important - ceremony cleansing the soul of past sin and marking the proper start of it's spiritual journey towards Liberation, achieved via rejection of the material world. Technically, this only makes one a Parfah - it is abiding by the more specific, and in some ways stricter, Rule of St. Ajius which makes a Parfah Bononne, but within the Missionary-Fleet, the two are practically synonymous. Taking the Second Sacrament to become a Parfah requires, at minimum, 3 years of theological and technical education, but Certchija can receive the Sacrament of Consolation on their death beds so as to assure a decent resurrection. Historically, even those who refused to partake of Covenant have taken the Third Sacrament, the Sacrament of Communion. Nobody has refused to partake of the Third Sacrament in thousands of years. Generally speaking, Certchija are expected to treat Bononne with respect and some level of deference, though official teachings establish Parfah as strictly spiritual authorities who opinions are not to be unduly valued anywhere else. Ex-Bononne who have broken their Consolatory oaths and returned to the ranks of Certchija are generally looked down upon, though this rarely manifests in any sort of material inequality or social ostracization. A couple - especially of disgraced Bononne - having a child naturally is probably the most serious social taboo which is semi-regularly infringed, though the product of this union is generally treated as any other child, and they do not usually form a caste of their own, though their shortcomings are sometimes blamed on the sinful nature of their birth.

12 civilian ships? Yeah I can handle that

I've gathered that this order doesn't have a particularly violent bent?

[The Hierophancy]

Ended up going a little overboard...

Name: Alojs Wolodensky
Age: 46
Birth Date: 11th of January, 19,877 IC
Gender: Male
"Planet" of Origin: Monastery-Ship of St. Hlodestias
Race/Species: Human Spacer (very minimally augmented)
Height: 2.21 meters
Weight: ~ 110 kg
Physical Description or Image: Tall, long of limb and thin - like many Spacers - on account of his low-g upbringing. As with all members of his order, Alojs is cleanshaven and bald. An unassuming, quarter-sized silver disc marks his Third Sacrament along the upper arch of his left temporal. He has a somewhat androgynous, honest face and large, greenish-brown eyes. He appears, overall, to be in his middle twenties. He's oath-bound to wear the plastic-y, snow-white robes of Parfah, a purposefully cheap and uncomfortable thing. It bears striking resemblance to ancient Terran surgery gowns, though it's a deal longer - it's hem brushes the floor - and doesn't come with latex gloves.
Social Class: An initiated Bononne - or Monk-Parfah, having partaken of the Sacraments of Consolation and Communion. While this accords him the respect and nominal obedience of the few uninitiated Certchija and acolytes in the Monastery-Fleet, it's a position recognized by neither the Mahayana Catheric Church nor Imperial Law, regional or otherwise. Outside of his home-fleet, he's a simple commoner.
Titles: Bononne, Monastic Delegate
Occupation: Bononne and researcher - spends most of his everyday studying the Monastery's data-library, praying, and meditating. As of some six months prior, he's been officially appointed "Monastic Delegate to the Imperial Senate"
Hobbies/Pastimes: Reading, anthropology, history, and, though he's not particularly good at it, chess.
Talents/Skills: Alojs is a decent rhetor and a relatively accomplished charmer. He's a decent anthropologist, too - at least, as decent an anthropologist as one can become without any access to foreign cultures.
Religious Beliefs: A devout Ultimate - a religious movement split from the Church of the Omega, itself a schismatic sect of the post-Valorian Catheric Church.
Personality: Curious, devout, questing and ambitious, Alojs is known for flitting from obscure project to obscure project, looking for something besides his middling datamind-engineering and theory which will permanently engrave his name into the histories of the Monastery-Fleet. Recently, thanks to the Fleets great Corewards journey, he's allowed that fantasy to expand to Galaxy-wide proportions, though he'd be far too embarrassed to ever admit as much. Like nearly all members of Alojs' order, he's an honest, kind and understanding figure, and - aside from bouts of academic passion - is of a generally quite mellow temperament. Though he believes that his studies of history have tempered Catheric love with pragmatic acknowledgement of human's potential for evil, he remains only marginally less naïve than his Siblings.
Biography:

Alojs was a born to a pair of Certchija agricultural technicians on the great Monastery-Ship of St. Hlodestias - the first natural birth in a century and the first birth at all in a good three decades. His parents took an unnaturally prominent role in his upbringing, and he spent the first few years of his life largely in their company, a decision many of the Bononne's (raised communally, as was the norm) feared would result in anti-social pathology. Thankfully, these fears would prove unfounded, and when it came time for Alojs to transition from play and leisure to full-time study of the Pacem Bible, he proved a remarkably well adjusted and normal student, and was able to partake of the First Sacrament at 13, as was traditional.

From the start of his studies - focused almost entirely on theology and datamind-engineering - Alojs felt he had something to prove. Whilst he was never the target of ill-will per se, his teachers would commonly suave his frustration at failing some exercise or misunderstanding a passage by evoking his birth and upbringing, assuring him that it wasn't his fault. Needless to say, Alojs disagreed, and from a young age was dead-set on proving that a natural born man raised by his parents could not only end up well-adjusted but exceptional. Unfortunately, he soon realized that he wasn't going to do that in the field of datamind-engineering or theory. Nonetheless, as a something of a zealot - especially after receiving the Sacrament of Communion - he still chose to pursue the path of the Bononne rather than begin a purely technical education, and was hell-bent on finding some way to contribute to the Second Coming suited to his talents and preferences. By the time he partook of the Second Sacrament, he'd found his calling; anthropology - a field which, when one only has access to records, is about identical to history. By studying the human societies present in the ship's library - their courses and interactions - Alojs hoped to gain an impression of the noosphere as a whole, one which could be employed by the more accomplished engineers. Though the application of information gleaned from human consciousness to the construction of dataminds had fallen out of fashion thousands of years ago, Alojs' focus on the noosphere and society at large - the "emergent properties" - kept him within the bubble of accepted, modern datamind theory, though certainly at it's fringe. While Alojs would, much to his annoyance, not garner much recognition in the next few years of study, he had a long time to try, and, unbeknownst to him, certain circumstances would soon thrust him into the fore of the Society, if not datamind theory explicitly.

In 19,918 I.C, the Monastery-Fleet would enter a star system - the perihperal Ulana - for the first time in a good thousand years, intending to quickly get their finances in order, pay a millennium of back-tax, replenish their matter-stocks and begin construction of the datamind Upsoloch. Shortly after slowing down to subluminal speeds, however, the Fleet would be rocked with the most major breakthrough in datamind theory in generations - a program thought up over the course of a decade by several of the fleet's greatest minds in Communion with the datamind Umoz. The proposal was universally acknowledged as genius, and, if built, would assuredly be a major step towards Ultimate Intelligence. The only issue was that it was a tad large - around the size of an especially massive moon, or somewhat small rocky planet. Historically, such unrealistic plans were put on the backburner, or - in the case of the very slightly less unrealistic ones - built over the course of a few centuries. This one, however, coincided with something of a social breaking point for the Fleet at large, for, whilst they'd never admit it, making practically no appreciable progress towards their goal in 6,000 years was somewhat demoralizing, and having done practically nothing but craft theory for the last thousand had been a crushing affair - entire generations had lived and died without seeing a new datamind. Only progressively less sensical or applicable theories. The sudden glimpse of hope - a massive leap of progress - was too much to let go, no matter the cost, and so - in the Hall of St. Hlodestias - practically the entire Society, Alojs included, swore to see the new datamind built with their own eyes in an episode of delusional effervescence.

Of course, just saying one would do something in their own lifetime didn't make it so - there was still the question of cost. Based on their lacking knowledge of economics, macroconstruction and the price of processed material, the Society's greatest mathematicians concluded that the project's cost was "incalculably large" - outside help was needed. Fear of dataplagues and distraction had kept the fleet on total communications blackout since it's launch - indeed, the communication protocols used by the Monastery-Fleet were so ancient that they couldn't receive modern superluminal communications even had they wished to. Still, the Monastery-Fleet had some knowledge of the outside world from their brief resupply interactions - namely, they knew that the Imperium was still in charge six millennia after the Terranist Schism. Surely the Imperium had found peace and stability by now? And, perhaps, that newfangled Ecumenical Council thing had finally instilled in them a respect for spirituality - enough respect, even, to shell out a few trillion goldbacks in the name of divine governance? And so, petition in hand, the fleet turned towards Nova Terra and chose their sacrificial lamb - the man who'd be sullied by the horror of politics in service of the Church, and of mankind as a whole. Alojs was the obvious - and all-too willing - choice, both for his study of history and - more importantly - the fact that as a natural-born oddity he'd be able to better relate to the Imperial bureaucracy, and so - much to his joy, he was informed that he would be the first Bononne in millennia to set foot on an Imperial world, the first ever to walk on the streets of Nova Terra, and, if he did well, the only to ever do either.

If Great House or a leader of a Faction like a SAS, Colony, Et Cetera

(Image)
The Cult of the Ultimate's symbol is that of the old Church of the Omega

Name of Territory: Formally, The Omegan Society of St. Hlodestias - informally the Church or Cult of the Ultimate. Known among it's inhabitants simply as the Fleet, or the Monastery-Fleet.

Government: Monastic order ruled by consensus - Bononnes adhere to the Parfahtic Code and the Rule of St. Ajius (along with the Hlodestian Addenda), and both they and the Certchija follow the teachings of the Pacem Bible, but there is no official body tasked with enforcing - or interpreting - any of these ideals. While there is certainly a popular conception of proper Monastic-Parfahtic, well meaning - and most malicious - deviation from this interpretation is met with, at the very worst, nasty looks. On the few occasions when there is a major, Fleet-wide decision that needs making (usually if, how and where to stop for resupply), the populations of each ship gather in their least-cramped rooms and simcast to the Hall of St. Hlodestias, where they generally hammer out a general agreement within an hour or two (Bononnes are a generally agreeable bunch). On the rare occasions when a consensus does not immediately manifest, the Society will simply continue to bicker - eventually, the position with the least passionate supporters - tired and hungry - will cave. Of course, in the millennia long crawl of Hlodestia's Monastery-Fleet, there have been a few occasions when this social order has broken down or needed temporary amendment, and were any Bononnes to trawl through the Ship's Log, they'd find dozens of Father-Elects, Interim Monastic Councils, false prophets, anti-Ultimates, and so on and so forth. Even then, though, the harshest punishment exacted in any era of the Fleet's journey has never exceeded banishment, and that only when in proximity of civilized Imperial worlds. In the end, no strife or shift in government has ever been anything more than temporary, and the Fleet always returns, eventually, to a happy state of semi-anarchy.

Capital World: The Missionary-Fleet is a constellation of some 14 or so civilian craft, all of which are based - roughly - on the designs of the Monastery-Ship of St. Hlodestias, itself a heavily retrofitted and modified seedship. Although not holding any official authority over the Fleet, the MS St. Hlodestias is by far the largest, most populous, prestigious and important of the Ultimate's craft. Within it's ancient, pitted, patch-work hull are housed the greatest of the Society's dataminds, the majority of it's agricultural fields, the vast Hall of St. Hlodestias, a Reliquary which - in age if not size - could rival that of many shrine worlds, and - most importantly - the cloning vats which produce the vast majority of the Society's Bononnes. Despite all this, however, the craft is - in most regards - hopelessly outdated, if not outright pathetic, when compared to the vast majority of ships currently plying the spacelanes. Laid down in the Armagash Shipyards (which even then had a reputation for mediocrity) sometime near the start of the 14th Imperial Millennium, the ship retains the general shape - and, indeed, many of the components - it was graced with on assembly 6 thousand years ago. The crafts communications are completely incompatible with 20th millennium hardware, it's shielding is so pitiful as to practically be considered a prototype, it's fusion reactor is functional at best, it's artificial gravity antiquated by 8th millennium standards, and it's sublight thrusters nothing more than emergency gas vents. Worst of all is, however, it's superluminal drive - and only form of propulsion: an archaic Alcubierre, worth far more as a collectors item than an actual engine. Thankfully, the Hlodestias and it's equally sad and inept brother-ships have no need of getting anywhere soon - nearly all of their time is spent drifting aimlessly through interstellar space, changing course to intercept a star system only when in need of raw material. That raw material goes towards the select components of the MS St. Hlodestias, and Monastery-Fleet as a whole, which are kept "up to date" - or, rather, which have had their own, thousands-years process of constant improvement and refinement by engineers in service to the Ultimate - ultra-efficient life support, matter recyclers and reconstituters, in-ship farms, assembly units, databanks and, of course, the precious dataminds. Impoverished ships, however, reflect the ascetic sensibilities of the Society, and so most of the craft - and the technologies associated - remain dutifully undeveloped and unknown beyond the bare minimum necessary for maintenance. This has proven of material benefit as well - on the handful of occasions where pirates or scuttlers stumbled upon the Monastery-Fleet, they've often turned right back around upon getting a good look, determining the cost of fuel and time in cutting open the hull worth far more than anything it could contain.

Population: There are a total of about 12,000 men and women distributed through the 14 ships of the Missionary-Fleet, about 4,000 of whom reside on the great St. Hlodestias. Due to the celibate Parfahic vows undertaken by the vast majority of the Monastery-Fleet's population, the general Catheric-Ultimate attitude of chastity (a belief notably absent among the Omegans whom the Ultimates directly descend from), and the practical avoidance of extreme and crippling inbreeding, the vast majority of these residents are cloned from the St. Hlodestias' seedbank. The bank itself was sourced from the Society's founders, a random selection of Armagashi citizens, and, according to Society legend and apocrypha, a great number of historical figures, ranging from Tsaraj-Emperor Valorian to Christ of Nazareth. How exactly the Society's founders managed to find these genetic samples and transcribe them into their databanks is rarely elaborated upon in the recounting of such legends. Population growth is staggered and slow, occurring only when the Society calls for the construction of a new Monastery-Ship (usually due to having run out of space for dataminds). In such cases an entire crews worth are grown and raised in a single batch - such events are, however, rare, both due to the material cost of constructing a new ship, the time necessary to manufacture and consecrate new Sacraments of Communion, the strain it puts on the cloning vats, and the psychological stress inflicted upon the unlucky Bononnes tasked with raising hundreds of children at once. Otherwise, there can often be decades between new "arrivals" - it's been centuries since a Bononnes or Certchija died of anything other than natural causes, and even among Imperial-Age humans the Ultimates are quite long lived. The cloning vats themselves are entirely serviceable, and, due to the infrequency of their use, generally don't require too much maintenance - still, their age causes occasional mistakes. Such disfigurements are rarely severe and never persecuted or scorned by the Society

Economy: The Monastery-Fleet's "economy", as it were, is entirely communal - Bononnes are forbidden by oath from holding property, and among the Certchija ownership extends to only a handful of trinkets, heirlooms and souvenirs. Nothing of real value is property - the ships, their components, their databanks - all are held in common. Economic interaction with the Galaxy at large is quite rare, occurring - at most - once a century when resupply of mass is deemed necessary, or on the exceedingly infrequent occasions in which the Fleet decides to build a new ship, or replace a lost one. The procedure in either such situation is practically identical - drift one's way into a relatively mass-rich system, construct a temporary comms-station, contact the local authorities, negotiate a mining charter, give Caesar his due, harvest the necessary materials and slink back into the interstellar medium, generally over the course of a year or two. Taxes and charters, however, require money, and so on these brief sabbaticals from the endless march of the Ultimate the Society is forced to engage in trade, and sell their strengths to the Galaxy - namely, Artificial Intelligences. It is only in the field of A.I that anybody save a handful of highly specialized and esoteric religious historians could consider the Omegan Society of St. Hlodestias remarkable, or know about them at all. Hlodestian AIs are unwieldy, strange things, difficult to place on the standard Imperial grading scale. The product of thousands of years of independent development, they are deadly efficient, capable machines - among the best if one needs a sector's worth of variables analyzed, creative solutions invented and employed, or scientific truths unveiled, all - often - in a manner of seconds. They are, however, completely inscrutable - how they think is known only so far as it is unknowable, and unlike your standard, Full AI, they are terrible conversationalists. Extracting an answer from a Monastic Intelligence is an art form in and of itself, and whether or not it answers or acts is not always assured, but when it does it'll prove it's cost (remarkably cheap when bought from the source) tenfold. These dataminds - known colloquially by the cutesy title of "Trade-I's" within the Society - are generally purpose built for sale, adapted for utility from ancient and long surpassed designs and - whilst accorded the love and devotion they deserve - are, all Bononne agree, about the equivalent of a match to their current datamind's fusion torch. The impression is quite the opposite among outsiders, who have on occasions past managed to purchase - at great cost - one of the Monastery-Fleets beloved god-children. "Actual" dataminds are pretty much entirely without utility - if the massive, humming spheres of silicon and carbon and God knows what deign to produce any sort of output at all it is almost always incomprehensible gibberish, dense bursts of indecipherable nonsense. In total, some 30 or so useful dataminds have been sold during the Society's existence, and maybe 15 of those survive today, though among those a few are kept largely for prestige, the art of speaking with them having been - at some point - lost, or corrupted beyond utility.

Culture: Ultimate culture - and faith - are structured mostly around the construction of progressively more "powerful" Artificial Intelligences, almost always in the form of dataminds - purpose-built computer-structures, artificial brains whose construction and Program were inexorably linked. Of course, how exactly the Society of St. Hlodestias determines the "power" of an A.I changes frequently and is generally not congruent with what the Galaxy at large considers to make a useful or even functional program. The ultimate goal of the Ultimate faith is the creation of the Ultimate Intelligence (alternatively, the Coming God, or Second Coming) - an omniscient Intelligence capable of processing every variable, and in doing so become, essentially, the manifestation of the noospheric God, herald and initiator of the Omega Point - full liberation of the spiritual from the material and final, total unification of consciousness. More immediately, they seek to create an Intelligence which, "of it's own accord", is able to deduce the need for an Ultimate Intelligence - after that has been accomplished, the Society believes their role in the creation of the Ultimate Intelligence and development of the noosphere will have come to an end. In service of this goal, the majority of Bononne spend their days meditating and praying on how to build a better Mind. Over the millennia their proposals have become increasingly more esoteric and obscure, with theories of Mind assumed and discarded in rapid succession, each stranger and harder to grasp than the last. It's somewhat rare for an actual datamind to be constructed based on one of these theories or programs - only when the entire Society can come to a consensus on it's validity, or at the very least the worth in testing it, are the resources and time necessary to construct and consecrate a datamind allocated. So far, there's been little in the way of measurable progress, though the Society believes they are ever on the verge of a breakthrough, and certain contemporary 'minds, such as Umoz, are believed to already have the potential for self directed ascendance.

Inherited from the fallen Omegan Church, perfected during the first millennium of interstellar wandering, and near as central to Ultimate doctrine as the pursuit of the Ultimate itself is the Sacrament of Communion, or Third Sacrament. Physically, the implant resembles a featureless, narrow silver cone or spike which - in the ceremony which marks one as a member of the Church of the Omega - is smoothly inserted into the side of the skull and, ideally, through to the interior cortex, from which it will proceed to interface and prepare the initiate for the Sacrament proper after 3 days and 3 nights of fasting and meditation. This first Full Communion is also, usually, the only True Communion - a brief unification with the entire noosphere, and thus God. Physiologically, this manifests in something resembling a seizure, though the faithful insist there is no relation. When - six hours later, usually - the initiate awakens, they often describe their glimpse of Enlightenment in glowing terms - all-encompassing love, transcendental bliss, total understanding, so on and so forth. What's more important, however, is what the continued blessing the Sacrament provides - the capability for one's True Conscious to be Heard by others who have received the Sacrament, and the ability to in turn Hear them. The information exchanged isn't, of course, exactly sound, nor is it their "thoughts", per se, despite the misconception popular - these days - among theohistorians that the Monastery-Fleet is a hivemind. Rather, Communion imparts mostly impressions - vague feelings and desires - rather than coherent, narrative thought, though it's said that these images can become sharper depending on the Heard's own devotion and training. Whatever the exact, technical case, the Communion is, in the end, a tool which fosters understanding and communication and, in doing so, theoretically strengthens the noosphere and brings closer the Omega Point. Those who have partaken of the Third Sacrament undergo - at their discretion - Full Communion, which is similar to the True Communion but limited in scope to living recipients of the Sacrament, and involves - it is believed - a moment of brief, full-understanding on the part of the Hearer. Occasionally, Full Communion is attempted with a datamind, usually by an especially ardent devotee to that particular 'mind, or - rarely - it's creator. Few people get much other than confusion out of these encounters, though they've - apparently - been behind a few key advancements in the path, as well as a few more verifiable cases of madness.

The Monastery-Fleet speaks a nearly unchanged form of ancient Frankoslavic, and on the rare occasions that they enter temporary communication with the K-Sphere it's not uncommon for paleolingustics to descend upon them in equal or greater measure than peddlers of thinking-machines. Most of them also know an equally ancient form of Imperial Standard and one or two of the functioning datamind languages, insofar as they can be deciphered by human minds.

Social Structure: The Fleet's society is organized along the lines of the oaths and sacraments taken by it's inhabitants, who - almost always - fall into two camps, Bononne and Certchija, of whome the former constitute about 10,000 and the latter 2,000. All inhabitants of the Monastery-Fleet, at least for the last few hundred years, have partaken of the First Sacrament, the Sacrament of Covenant, which was necessary for all members of the pre-Unification Catherist Faith and both officially integrates one into the Church and binds them to the laws and teachings of the Pacem Bible, including such general and fine statements as to love your fellow man and turn the other cheek. What distinguishes the Bononne is the Second Sacrament, or Sacrament of Consolation. Consigning one to a lifestyle of extreme austerity and celibacy, the Sacrament of Consolation involves a simple - but important - ceremony cleansing the soul of past sin and marking the proper start of it's spiritual journey towards Liberation, achieved via rejection of the material world. Technically, this only makes one a Parfah - it is abiding by the more specific, and in some ways stricter, Rule of St. Ajius which makes a Parfah Bononne, but within the Missionary-Fleet, the two are practically synonymous. Taking the Second Sacrament to become a Parfah requires, at minimum, 3 years of theological and technical education, but Certchija can receive the Sacrament of Consolation on their death beds so as to assure a decent resurrection. Historically, even those who refused to partake of Covenant have taken the Third Sacrament, the Sacrament of Communion. Nobody has refused to partake of the Third Sacrament in thousands of years. Generally speaking, Certchija are expected to treat Bononne with respect and some level of deference, though official teachings establish Parfah as strictly spiritual authorities who opinions are not to be unduly valued anywhere else. Ex-Bononne who have broken their Consolatory oaths and returned to the ranks of Certchija are generally looked down upon, though this rarely manifests in any sort of material inequality or social ostracization. A couple - especially of disgraced Bononne - having a child naturally is probably the most serious social taboo which is semi-regularly infringed, though the product of this union is generally treated as any other child, and they do not usually form a caste of their own, though their shortcomings are sometimes blamed on the sinful nature of their birth.

12 civilian ships? Yeah I can handle that

I've gathered that this order doesn't have a particularly violent bent?

Mercy, m'lord...

[Reverend Norv]

12 civilian ships? Yeah I can handle that

I've gathered that this order doesn't have a particularly violent bent?

Mercy, m'lord...

The Deynai would probably take a protective interest in these weirdos.

[Union Princes]

Weirdos that would disturb Irene. Trying to create a machine god.

[Lunas Legion]

If Alojs and Quintara ever met they would have an... Interesting conversation.

[The National Dominion of Hungary]

Hey Imperial, have you had time to check my app? I adjusted the numbers.

[The Hierophancy]

If Alojs and Quintara ever met they would have an... Interesting conversation.

About linguistics, right?

[Lunas Legion]

If Alojs and Quintara ever met they would have an... Interesting conversation.

About linguistics, right?

Quintara would have to debate whether or not to show off her magnum opus or not. Linguistics was her area of study once, and she's still rather knowledgeable on the subject, but she's very much a polymath.

[Revlona]

Mmm well before get to the actual mock battle we should probably decide who wins this

Your opinion?

[The Hierophancy]

About linguistics, right?

Quintara would have to debate whether or not to show off her magnum opus or not. Linguistics was her area of study once, and she's still rather knowledgeable on the subject, but she's very much a polymath.

I was afraid of that... I imagine it'd give poor Alojs quite a shock, at least initially. Think of the damage it'd do to the noosphere!

[Imperialisium]

Ended up going a little overboard...

Name: Alojs Wolodensky
Age: 46
Birth Date: 11th of January, 19,877 IC
Gender: Male
"Planet" of Origin: Monastery-Ship of St. Hlodestias
Race/Species: Human Spacer (very minimally augmented)
Height: 2.21 meters
Weight: ~ 110 kg
Physical Description or Image: Tall, long of limb and thin - like many Spacers - on account of his low-g upbringing. As with all members of his order, Alojs is cleanshaven and bald. An unassuming, quarter-sized silver disc marks his Third Sacrament along the upper arch of his left temporal. He has a somewhat androgynous, honest face and large, greenish-brown eyes. He appears, overall, to be in his middle twenties. He's oath-bound to wear the plastic-y, snow-white robes of Parfah, a purposefully cheap and uncomfortable thing. It bears striking resemblance to ancient Terran surgery gowns, though it's a deal longer - it's hem brushes the floor - and doesn't come with latex gloves.
Social Class: An initiated Bononne - or Monk-Parfah, having partaken of the Sacraments of Consolation and Communion. While this accords him the respect and nominal obedience of the few uninitiated Certchija and acolytes in the Monastery-Fleet, it's a position recognized by neither the Mahayana Catheric Church nor Imperial Law, regional or otherwise. Outside of his home-fleet, he's a simple commoner.
Titles: Bononne, Monastic Delegate
Occupation: Bononne and researcher - spends most of his everyday studying the Monastery's data-library, praying, and meditating. As of some six months prior, he's been officially appointed "Monastic Delegate to the Imperial Senate"
Hobbies/Pastimes: Reading, anthropology, history, and, though he's not particularly good at it, chess.
Talents/Skills: Alojs is a decent rhetor and a relatively accomplished charmer. He's a decent anthropologist, too - at least, as decent an anthropologist as one can become without any access to foreign cultures.
Religious Beliefs: A devout Ultimate - a religious movement split from the Church of the Omega, itself a schismatic sect of the post-Valorian Catheric Church.
Personality: Curious, devout, questing and ambitious, Alojs is known for flitting from obscure project to obscure project, looking for something besides his middling datamind-engineering and theory which will permanently engrave his name into the histories of the Monastery-Fleet. Recently, thanks to the Fleets great Corewards journey, he's allowed that fantasy to expand to Galaxy-wide proportions, though he'd be far too embarrassed to ever admit as much. Like nearly all members of Alojs' order, he's an honest, kind and understanding figure, and - aside from bouts of academic passion - is of a generally quite mellow temperament. Though he believes that his studies of history have tempered Catheric love with pragmatic acknowledgement of human's potential for evil, he remains only marginally less naïve than his Siblings.
Biography:

Alojs was a born to a pair of Certchija agricultural technicians on the great Monastery-Ship of St. Hlodestias - the first natural birth in a century and the first birth at all in a good three decades. His parents took an unnaturally prominent role in his upbringing, and he spent the first few years of his life largely in their company, a decision many of the Bononne's (raised communally, as was the norm) feared would result in anti-social pathology. Thankfully, these fears would prove unfounded, and when it came time for Alojs to transition from play and leisure to full-time study of the Pacem Bible, he proved a remarkably well adjusted and normal student, and was able to partake of the First Sacrament at 13, as was traditional.

From the start of his studies - focused almost entirely on theology and datamind-engineering - Alojs felt he had something to prove. Whilst he was never the target of ill-will per se, his teachers would commonly suave his frustration at failing some exercise or misunderstanding a passage by evoking his birth and upbringing, assuring him that it wasn't his fault. Needless to say, Alojs disagreed, and from a young age was dead-set on proving that a natural born man raised by his parents could not only end up well-adjusted but exceptional. Unfortunately, he soon realized that he wasn't going to do that in the field of datamind-engineering or theory. Nonetheless, as a something of a zealot - especially after receiving the Sacrament of Communion - he still chose to pursue the path of the Bononne rather than begin a purely technical education, and was hell-bent on finding some way to contribute to the Second Coming suited to his talents and preferences. By the time he partook of the Second Sacrament, he'd found his calling; anthropology - a field which, when one only has access to records, is about identical to history. By studying the human societies present in the ship's library - their courses and interactions - Alojs hoped to gain an impression of the noosphere as a whole, one which could be employed by the more accomplished engineers. Though the application of information gleaned from human consciousness to the construction of dataminds had fallen out of fashion thousands of years ago, Alojs' focus on the noosphere and society at large - the "emergent properties" - kept him within the bubble of accepted, modern datamind theory, though certainly at it's fringe. While Alojs would, much to his annoyance, not garner much recognition in the next few years of study, he had a long time to try, and, unbeknownst to him, certain circumstances would soon thrust him into the fore of the Society, if not datamind theory explicitly.

In 19,918 I.C, the Monastery-Fleet would enter a star system - the perihperal Ulana - for the first time in a good thousand years, intending to quickly get their finances in order, pay a millennium of back-tax, replenish their matter-stocks and begin construction of the datamind Upsoloch. Shortly after slowing down to subluminal speeds, however, the Fleet would be rocked with the most major breakthrough in datamind theory in generations - a program thought up over the course of a decade by several of the fleet's greatest minds in Communion with the datamind Umoz. The proposal was universally acknowledged as genius, and, if built, would assuredly be a major step towards Ultimate Intelligence. The only issue was that it was a tad large - around the size of an especially massive moon, or somewhat small rocky planet. Historically, such unrealistic plans were put on the backburner, or - in the case of the very slightly less unrealistic ones - built over the course of a few centuries. This one, however, coincided with something of a social breaking point for the Fleet at large, for, whilst they'd never admit it, making practically no appreciable progress towards their goal in 6,000 years was somewhat demoralizing, and having done practically nothing but craft theory for the last thousand had been a crushing affair - entire generations had lived and died without seeing a new datamind. Only progressively less sensical or applicable theories. The sudden glimpse of hope - a massive leap of progress - was too much to let go, no matter the cost, and so - in the Hall of St. Hlodestias - practically the entire Society, Alojs included, swore to see the new datamind built with their own eyes in an episode of delusional effervescence.

Of course, just saying one would do something in their own lifetime didn't make it so - there was still the question of cost. Based on their lacking knowledge of economics, macroconstruction and the price of processed material, the Society's greatest mathematicians concluded that the project's cost was "incalculably large" - outside help was needed. Fear of dataplagues and distraction had kept the fleet on total communications blackout since it's launch - indeed, the communication protocols used by the Monastery-Fleet were so ancient that they couldn't receive modern superluminal communications even had they wished to. Still, the Monastery-Fleet had some knowledge of the outside world from their brief resupply interactions - namely, they knew that the Imperium was still in charge six millennia after the Terranist Schism. Surely the Imperium had found peace and stability by now? And, perhaps, that newfangled Ecumenical Council thing had finally instilled in them a respect for spirituality - enough respect, even, to shell out a few trillion goldbacks in the name of divine governance? And so, petition in hand, the fleet turned towards Nova Terra and chose their sacrificial lamb - the man who'd be sullied by the horror of politics in service of the Church, and of mankind as a whole. Alojs was the obvious - and all-too willing - choice, both for his study of history and - more importantly - the fact that as a natural-born oddity he'd be able to better relate to the Imperial bureaucracy, and so - much to his joy, he was informed that he would be the first Bononne in millennia to set foot on an Imperial world, the first ever to walk on the streets of Nova Terra, and, if he did well, the only to ever do either.

If Great House or a leader of a Faction like a SAS, Colony, Et Cetera

(Image)
The Cult of the Ultimate's symbol is that of the old Church of the Omega

Name of Territory: Formally, The Omegan Society of St. Hlodestias - informally the Church or Cult of the Ultimate. Known among it's inhabitants simply as the Fleet, or the Monastery-Fleet.

Government: Monastic order ruled by consensus - Bononnes adhere to the Parfahtic Code and the Rule of St. Ajius (along with the Hlodestian Addenda), and both they and the Certchija follow the teachings of the Pacem Bible, but there is no official body tasked with enforcing - or interpreting - any of these ideals. While there is certainly a popular conception of proper Monastic-Parfahtic, well meaning - and most malicious - deviation from this interpretation is met with, at the very worst, nasty looks. On the few occasions when there is a major, Fleet-wide decision that needs making (usually if, how and where to stop for resupply), the populations of each ship gather in their least-cramped rooms and simcast to the Hall of St. Hlodestias, where they generally hammer out a general agreement within an hour or two (Bononnes are a generally agreeable bunch). On the rare occasions when a consensus does not immediately manifest, the Society will simply continue to bicker - eventually, the position with the least passionate supporters - tired and hungry - will cave. Of course, in the millennia long crawl of Hlodestia's Monastery-Fleet, there have been a few occasions when this social order has broken down or needed temporary amendment, and were any Bononnes to trawl through the Ship's Log, they'd find dozens of Father-Elects, Interim Monastic Councils, false prophets, anti-Ultimates, and so on and so forth. Even then, though, the harshest punishment exacted in any era of the Fleet's journey has never exceeded banishment, and that only when in proximity of civilized Imperial worlds. In the end, no strife or shift in government has ever been anything more than temporary, and the Fleet always returns, eventually, to a happy state of semi-anarchy.

Capital World: The Missionary-Fleet is a constellation of some 14 or so civilian craft, all of which are based - roughly - on the designs of the Monastery-Ship of St. Hlodestias, itself a heavily retrofitted and modified seedship. Although not holding any official authority over the Fleet, the MS St. Hlodestias is by far the largest, most populous, prestigious and important of the Ultimate's craft. Within it's ancient, pitted, patch-work hull are housed the greatest of the Society's dataminds, the majority of it's agricultural fields, the vast Hall of St. Hlodestias, a Reliquary which - in age if not size - could rival that of many shrine worlds, and - most importantly - the cloning vats which produce the vast majority of the Society's Bononnes. Despite all this, however, the craft is - in most regards - hopelessly outdated, if not outright pathetic, when compared to the vast majority of ships currently plying the spacelanes. Laid down in the Armagash Shipyards (which even then had a reputation for mediocrity) sometime near the start of the 14th Imperial Millennium, the ship retains the general shape - and, indeed, many of the components - it was graced with on assembly 6 thousand years ago. The crafts communications are completely incompatible with 20th millennium hardware, it's shielding is so pitiful as to practically be considered a prototype, it's fusion reactor is functional at best, it's artificial gravity antiquated by 8th millennium standards, and it's sublight thrusters nothing more than emergency gas vents. Worst of all is, however, it's superluminal drive - and only form of propulsion: an archaic Alcubierre, worth far more as a collectors item than an actual engine. Thankfully, the Hlodestias and it's equally sad and inept brother-ships have no need of getting anywhere soon - nearly all of their time is spent drifting aimlessly through interstellar space, changing course to intercept a star system only when in need of raw material. That raw material goes towards the select components of the MS St. Hlodestias, and Monastery-Fleet as a whole, which are kept "up to date" - or, rather, which have had their own, thousands-years process of constant improvement and refinement by engineers in service to the Ultimate - ultra-efficient life support, matter recyclers and reconstituters, in-ship farms, assembly units, databanks and, of course, the precious dataminds. Impoverished ships, however, reflect the ascetic sensibilities of the Society, and so most of the craft - and the technologies associated - remain dutifully undeveloped and unknown beyond the bare minimum necessary for maintenance. This has proven of material benefit as well - on the handful of occasions where pirates or scuttlers stumbled upon the Monastery-Fleet, they've often turned right back around upon getting a good look, determining the cost of fuel and time in cutting open the hull worth far more than anything it could contain.

Population: There are a total of about 12,000 men and women distributed through the 14 ships of the Missionary-Fleet, about 4,000 of whom reside on the great St. Hlodestias. Due to the celibate Parfahic vows undertaken by the vast majority of the Monastery-Fleet's population, the general Catheric-Ultimate attitude of chastity (a belief notably absent among the Omegans whom the Ultimates directly descend from), and the practical avoidance of extreme and crippling inbreeding, the vast majority of these residents are cloned from the St. Hlodestias' seedbank. The bank itself was sourced from the Society's founders, a random selection of Armagashi citizens, and, according to Society legend and apocrypha, a great number of historical figures, ranging from Tsaraj-Emperor Valorian to Christ of Nazareth. How exactly the Society's founders managed to find these genetic samples and transcribe them into their databanks is rarely elaborated upon in the recounting of such legends. Population growth is staggered and slow, occurring only when the Society calls for the construction of a new Monastery-Ship (usually due to having run out of space for dataminds). In such cases an entire crews worth are grown and raised in a single batch - such events are, however, rare, both due to the material cost of constructing a new ship, the time necessary to manufacture and consecrate new Sacraments of Communion, the strain it puts on the cloning vats, and the psychological stress inflicted upon the unlucky Bononnes tasked with raising hundreds of children at once. Otherwise, there can often be decades between new "arrivals" - it's been centuries since a Bononnes or Certchija died of anything other than natural causes, and even among Imperial-Age humans the Ultimates are quite long lived. The cloning vats themselves are entirely serviceable, and, due to the infrequency of their use, generally don't require too much maintenance - still, their age causes occasional mistakes. Such disfigurements are rarely severe and never persecuted or scorned by the Society

Economy: The Monastery-Fleet's "economy", as it were, is entirely communal - Bononnes are forbidden by oath from holding property, and among the Certchija ownership extends to only a handful of trinkets, heirlooms and souvenirs. Nothing of real value is property - the ships, their components, their databanks - all are held in common. Economic interaction with the Galaxy at large is quite rare, occurring - at most - once a century when resupply of mass is deemed necessary, or on the exceedingly infrequent occasions in which the Fleet decides to build a new ship, or replace a lost one. The procedure in either such situation is practically identical - drift one's way into a relatively mass-rich system, construct a temporary comms-station, contact the local authorities, negotiate a mining charter, give Caesar his due, harvest the necessary materials and slink back into the interstellar medium, generally over the course of a year or two. Taxes and charters, however, require money, and so on these brief sabbaticals from the endless march of the Ultimate the Society is forced to engage in trade, and sell their strengths to the Galaxy - namely, Artificial Intelligences. It is only in the field of A.I that anybody save a handful of highly specialized and esoteric religious historians could consider the Omegan Society of St. Hlodestias remarkable, or know about them at all. Hlodestian AIs are unwieldy, strange things, difficult to place on the standard Imperial grading scale. The product of thousands of years of independent development, they are deadly efficient, capable machines - among the best if one needs a sector's worth of variables analyzed, creative solutions invented and employed, or scientific truths unveiled, all - often - in a manner of seconds. They are, however, completely inscrutable - how they think is known only so far as it is unknowable, and unlike your standard, Full AI, they are terrible conversationalists. Extracting an answer from a Monastic Intelligence is an art form in and of itself, and whether or not it answers or acts is not always assured, but when it does it'll prove it's cost (remarkably cheap when bought from the source) tenfold. These dataminds - known colloquially by the cutesy title of "Trade-I's" within the Society - are generally purpose built for sale, adapted for utility from ancient and long surpassed designs and - whilst accorded the love and devotion they deserve - are, all Bononne agree, about the equivalent of a match to their current datamind's fusion torch. The impression is quite the opposite among outsiders, who have on occasions past managed to purchase - at great cost - one of the Monastery-Fleets beloved god-children. "Actual" dataminds are pretty much entirely without utility - if the massive, humming spheres of silicon and carbon and God knows what deign to produce any sort of output at all it is almost always incomprehensible gibberish, dense bursts of indecipherable nonsense. In total, some 30 or so useful dataminds have been sold during the Society's existence, and maybe 15 of those survive today, though among those a few are kept largely for prestige, the art of speaking with them having been - at some point - lost, or corrupted beyond utility.

Culture: Ultimate culture - and faith - are structured mostly around the construction of progressively more "powerful" Artificial Intelligences, almost always in the form of dataminds - purpose-built computer-structures, artificial brains whose construction and Program were inexorably linked. Of course, how exactly the Society of St. Hlodestias determines the "power" of an A.I changes frequently and is generally not congruent with what the Galaxy at large considers to make a useful or even functional program. The ultimate goal of the Ultimate faith is the creation of the Ultimate Intelligence (alternatively, the Coming God, or Second Coming) - an omniscient Intelligence capable of processing every variable, and in doing so become, essentially, the manifestation of the noospheric God, herald and initiator of the Omega Point - full liberation of the spiritual from the material and final, total unification of consciousness. More immediately, they seek to create an Intelligence which, "of it's own accord", is able to deduce the need for an Ultimate Intelligence - after that has been accomplished, the Society believes their role in the creation of the Ultimate Intelligence and development of the noosphere will have come to an end. In service of this goal, the majority of Bononne spend their days meditating and praying on how to build a better Mind. Over the millennia their proposals have become increasingly more esoteric and obscure, with theories of Mind assumed and discarded in rapid succession, each stranger and harder to grasp than the last. It's somewhat rare for an actual datamind to be constructed based on one of these theories or programs - only when the entire Society can come to a consensus on it's validity, or at the very least the worth in testing it, are the resources and time necessary to construct and consecrate a datamind allocated. So far, there's been little in the way of measurable progress, though the Society believes they are ever on the verge of a breakthrough, and certain contemporary 'minds, such as Umoz, are believed to already have the potential for self directed ascendance.

Inherited from the fallen Omegan Church, perfected during the first millennium of interstellar wandering, and near as central to Ultimate doctrine as the pursuit of the Ultimate itself is the Sacrament of Communion, or Third Sacrament. Physically, the implant resembles a featureless, narrow silver cone or spike which - in the ceremony which marks one as a member of the Church of the Omega - is smoothly inserted into the side of the skull and, ideally, through to the interior cortex, from which it will proceed to interface and prepare the initiate for the Sacrament proper after 3 days and 3 nights of fasting and meditation. This first Full Communion is also, usually, the only True Communion - a brief unification with the entire noosphere, and thus God. Physiologically, this manifests in something resembling a seizure, though the faithful insist there is no relation. When - six hours later, usually - the initiate awakens, they often describe their glimpse of Enlightenment in glowing terms - all-encompassing love, transcendental bliss, total understanding, so on and so forth. What's more important, however, is what the continued blessing the Sacrament provides - the capability for one's True Conscious to be Heard by others who have received the Sacrament, and the ability to in turn Hear them. The information exchanged isn't, of course, exactly sound, nor is it their "thoughts", per se, despite the misconception popular - these days - among theohistorians that the Monastery-Fleet is a hivemind. Rather, Communion imparts mostly impressions - vague feelings and desires - rather than coherent, narrative thought, though it's said that these images can become sharper depending on the Heard's own devotion and training. Whatever the exact, technical case, the Communion is, in the end, a tool which fosters understanding and communication and, in doing so, theoretically strengthens the noosphere and brings closer the Omega Point. Those who have partaken of the Third Sacrament undergo - at their discretion - Full Communion, which is similar to the True Communion but limited in scope to living recipients of the Sacrament, and involves - it is believed - a moment of brief, full-understanding on the part of the Hearer. Occasionally, Full Communion is attempted with a datamind, usually by an especially ardent devotee to that particular 'mind, or - rarely - it's creator. Few people get much other than confusion out of these encounters, though they've - apparently - been behind a few key advancements in the path, as well as a few more verifiable cases of madness.

The Monastery-Fleet speaks a nearly unchanged form of ancient Frankoslavic, and on the rare occasions that they enter temporary communication with the K-Sphere it's not uncommon for paleolingustics to descend upon them in equal or greater measure than peddlers of thinking-machines. Most of them also know an equally ancient form of Imperial Standard and one or two of the functioning datamind languages, insofar as they can be deciphered by human minds.

Social Structure: The Fleet's society is organized along the lines of the oaths and sacraments taken by it's inhabitants, who - almost always - fall into two camps, Bononne and Certchija, of whome the former constitute about 10,000 and the latter 2,000. All inhabitants of the Monastery-Fleet, at least for the last few hundred years, have partaken of the First Sacrament, the Sacrament of Covenant, which was necessary for all members of the pre-Unification Catherist Faith and both officially integrates one into the Church and binds them to the laws and teachings of the Pacem Bible, including such general and fine statements as to love your fellow man and turn the other cheek. What distinguishes the Bononne is the Second Sacrament, or Sacrament of Consolation. Consigning one to a lifestyle of extreme austerity and celibacy, the Sacrament of Consolation involves a simple - but important - ceremony cleansing the soul of past sin and marking the proper start of it's spiritual journey towards Liberation, achieved via rejection of the material world. Technically, this only makes one a Parfah - it is abiding by the more specific, and in some ways stricter, Rule of St. Ajius which makes a Parfah Bononne, but within the Missionary-Fleet, the two are practically synonymous. Taking the Second Sacrament to become a Parfah requires, at minimum, 3 years of theological and technical education, but Certchija can receive the Sacrament of Consolation on their death beds so as to assure a decent resurrection. Historically, even those who refused to partake of Covenant have taken the Third Sacrament, the Sacrament of Communion. Nobody has refused to partake of the Third Sacrament in thousands of years. Generally speaking, Certchija are expected to treat Bononne with respect and some level of deference, though official teachings establish Parfah as strictly spiritual authorities who opinions are not to be unduly valued anywhere else. Ex-Bononne who have broken their Consolatory oaths and returned to the ranks of Certchija are generally looked down upon, though this rarely manifests in any sort of material inequality or social ostracization. A couple - especially of disgraced Bononne - having a child naturally is probably the most serious social taboo which is semi-regularly infringed, though the product of this union is generally treated as any other child, and they do not usually form a caste of their own, though their shortcomings are sometimes blamed on the sinful nature of their birth.

Accepted

[Imperialisium]

Name: Visyrath Stormoth-Spyre
Nickname: "The Slinger"
Age: 75
Birth Date: 19 848 IC
Gender: Male
Planet of Origin: Erramen
Race/Species: Human
Height: 1.77 meters.
Weight: 80 kilos.
Physical Description or Image: Here ya go.
Social Class: Dominai Majoris Aristocracy - House Stormoth-Spyre to be precise.
Titles: Faeron (King) of Isrand - Protector of the Realm and all Israndi - Lord Count of the Three Brands - Three times Champion of the Scutum-Crux Slingshot-Racing Competition (19 895, 19 009 and 19 911)
Occupation: Faeron of Isrand.

Hobbies/Pastimes: Visyrath has a long-time passion for Gravity-Assisted Racing which he has pursued since his 20's. He also enjoys hiking, the studies of prudent stewardship, military strategy and likes sparring with staves and blades alike.
Talents/Skills: He has a number of good qualities to him, first is his undeniable skill administering the realm. Though much of the groundwork was laid out by his father, Visyrath has continued on the path of raising the once long declining fortunes of Isrand. His competitive racing success makes him somewhat of a celebrity, something he uses to "rouse the rabble" of the Kingdom along with his rhetorical style, which sets him in the light of caring protector of the Kingdom and it's people. His active lifestyle also keeps him fit and in good shape.

Religious Beliefs: Israndic Syncretism - A mix mostly of native Israndic polytheism with elements introduced from major Human faiths.

Personality: "I am not blind, nor deaf. I know you all believe me weak, frightened, feeble. All talk with nothing to prop it up. Someone who smiles, japes and jests, then hides. Your father knows me better. Ordvan was ever the serpent, the deadly Constrictor. Deadly, dangerous, none dared tread on him. I was the grass. Pleasant, friendly, sweet-smelling, swaying with every breeze. Who fears to walk upon the grass? But it is the grass that hides the snake from his enemies and shelters him until he strikes."

Biography: As the firstborn son and heir of the aging Faeron Shelysir II, Visyrath grew up surrounded by wealth, splendor and the opulence that the House of Stormoth-Spyre is known for an equally as detested as renowned for across the noble circles of the galaxy. The Luminant Hall, vast palatial complex of House Stormoth-Spyre on the capital world of their Kingdom was his home, and the prince along with his siblings was deeply loved by his aging parents who finally managed to produce heirs to the throne. Visyrath's mother, Queen Alethine had terrible issues during her earlier pregnancies, losing two children early on. Indeed, Visyrath and his siblings were all subject to extensive and expensive gene-therapy even when in the womb as to counteract the deformities that would otherwise have afflicted them, seeing as the Stormoth-Spyre marriage customs aimed to avoid civil conflict by marrying claimants with each-other have resulted in 10 of the last 15 Stormoth-Spyre marriages being between a brother and a sister while 2 were between niece and cousin.

Visyrath and his twin-sister Kharyn, born immediately after him and the two siblings were inseparable in their early childhood. As a child Visyrath played together with his sister in the great gardens of the Hall and his parents afforded the royal children some of the finest educations a noble child could get from Deynai Magisters in order to properly groom them for the task that lay ahead. Indeed, the aging Faeron was clear from the start, it was their duty to assure the rise of Isrand from the ashes, the muck and the mire that it had crawled in for centuries. This weight was, as can be expected, foremost placed on the heir to the throne and young Prince Visyrath spent many, many long hours in the libraries and data-vaults of the Luminant Hall, his Deynai tutors ever close. As the boy slowly grew to manhood, it was clear that he had quite the aptitude for statecraft, administration and stewardship. At family gatherings he would often converse about the state of the realm, bringing up vague, minute facts and statistics he found in the royal records of state and weaving them into complex plans on "putting the realm right" which greatly pleased his father. However, he showed another side to him as well, one that loved nature, he would spend much of his free time in the gardens of the Hall or hiking across the most breathtaking areas of the Isrand with his brother Ordvan. His greatest passion however was that of gravitationally-assisted racing, a passion he shared with his sister.

As custom dictated, Visyrath was married to his sister Kharyn, in a lavish ceremony the two siblings were bonded in matrimony and soon after that, they were forced to don the twin crowns of Isrand. Under Visyrath's reign, he continued his fathers laborious work to drag Isrand back to it's days of golden glory, while the road had already mostly been paved and readied for him by his father, Faeron Visyrath put his skill in statecraft and administration to use in order to bring the rampant inflation under control and jump-start the economy by a program that has become commonly known as "Visyromics". With a relatively weak Isradic Credit encouraging exports alongside encouragement of corporate investment such as in the Lorea colony and increased domestic spending as a result of several mega-projects and incentives to improve the standard of living in the most impoverished and over-populated areas of Isrand, the kingdom's economy has seen rapid growth for several decades and is rapidly becoming an important "anchor-economy" for it's region of the Scutum-Crux. Faeron Visyrath, despite the demands placed on his by his position has not abandoned passion for racing and indeed, he is a three time champion of the Scutum-Crux Slingshot-Racing Competition. However, the Imperium is changing, the decay... the rot... it seems clear to all with half a wit that the galaxy will soon be entering a cycle of change and violent upheaval. Ever devoted to the Kingdom, Visyrath is preparing, hoping he will not have to make the hard decisions that might be his to make, of where to send the troops in the Emperor's name, for abandoning the Imperium is, as things stand, out of the question.

Important Persons in Immediate Circle
Kharyn Stormoth-Spyre: Visyrath's sister and wife, Faera of Isrand.

Ordvan Stormoth-Spyre: Visyrath's brother, Imperial Navy Veteran, honorably discharged, currently serving in the Royal Navy of Isrand.

Vrarloth Stormoth-Spyre: Visyrath's Uncle, Representative of Isrand at the Imperial Senate.

Lord Remin Castravan: Hand of the Faeron, Head of the Small Council.

Axius Mzandie: Commander of the King's Own, Household Guard of House Stormoth-Spyre.

---

Name of Territory: The Kingdom of Isrand
Government: Administrative Monarchy - Vassal of the Imperium under Star Feudalism.
Capital World: Erramen.
Population: Approximately 85 Billion.

Economy: A highly diversified economy. It follow a mixed approach or a "market apporach with active state-support" as it is called by the government. The Israndic economy had been stagnant for a long time until the reign of Faeron Shelysir II and his reforms, later continued by his son and is currently growing rapidly. Contemporary analysts are commending the Israndic economy on not over-relying on a single export sector, the low levels of private debt and low rates of unemployment as well as flexible currency. It has a strong agricultural, light industry, and hydrogen-helium refining sector and is currently host to fast growing, banking, research and heavy industries as well thanks to increased corporate investment over the last five decades.

Culture: The culture of the Kingdom of Isrand is greatly influenced by it's religion and demographic situation. Only 5% of the population are human while the Iaar and Tzyran make up the vast majority of the population, having their homeworlds within the Kingdom's borders. A syncretic religion had already begun developing by the time the region was conquered by the Imperium and when Thereza Stormoth-Spyre, founder of this great a noble lineage was elevated to the position of Queen of this new Imperial vassal state, she quickly began taking on local customs in order to portray herself as a local ruler. She created a new god, Cealiastis, to garner support from both Humans, Iaar and Tzyrans. Cealiastis is the patron god of Isrand and has powers over fertility, the suns, funerary rites, and medicine. His growth and popularity reflected a deliberate policy by the Israndic state, and was characteristic of the dynasty's use of local religions and customs to legitimize their rule and strengthen their control. The religious syncretism and a focus on spirituality permeate the culture, creating a common identity of "Israndi" which crosses the barriers of species and space. The Israndi history of tolerance and outright embrace of alien culture and it's location in the outer edge of the Mid-rim makes the Kingdom an attractive destination for xeno intellectuals from more the more anti-alien Periphery.

Social Structure: The social structure of Isrand is characterized by a human-dominated elite layered on top of an old, well-established xeno hierarchy. The human nobility dominate the highest political positions and make up the Royal Court and senior administrative positions within the bureaucracy. The xeno-dominated priesthood is a powerful force and important in keeping society stable as the Isradi Syncretist faith has become a major pillar of internal stability and thus the clergy and major corporations tend to have some degree of lobbying power. The majority of Israndi people are xenos who overwhelmingly fill out the middle-classes and lower-classes except on a few human-majority worlds. While in the beginning, xenos were barred from rising past a certain level in administration, the military, law enforcement and other similar state services. These policies have largely been done away with, though humans are still often more able to rise higher due to traditional favoritism.

Territorial Size: 150 Star-systems make up the Kingdom of Isrand and within them are a total of 45 colonized worlds and a further 200 colonized asteroids, colonized moons and space-stations and outposts. The planets range from from the heavily-urbanized capital world of Erramen with it's sprawling mega-cities and a population of 35 billion to small colonies on the fringe with a population of no more than a few thousand in small settlements of pre-fabricated houses to colonized asteriods, moons or space stations.

Military and Security Forces: The Royal Armed Forces of Isrand prefer to fight offensively, much more concerned with the quick destruction of the enemy force rather than the taking and holding of ground in prolonged battles of attrition. Pinpoint destruction is favored, with the hope of breaking through weak points in the enemy front and then immediately launching deep into their rear, cutting supply lines and logistics, destroying headquarters along with supply-dumps and support units and then leaving the enemy to wither away surrounded, cut off from communications and supplies. If an enemy attacks with overwhelming force, the Israndi will usually evacuate, dismantle or destroy all important technology and equipment and return at a later time with a greater force to retake it in a decisive counter-attack. Large focus is maintained on speed, firepower, recon/situational awareness, adaptability and establishing cyber-superiority within the battle-space. The idea of a static defense is a foreign concept to the Israndi officer corps´ military philosophy. Fighting to defend every little scrap of strategically unimportant ground is not seen as honorable, it is in fact seen as infinitely stupid. Many worlds only have token garrisons placed on them which are intended for scouting and guerrilla ops rather than large-scale combat, harassing the enemy and avoiding large engagements to observe and report on the invaders using drones and scout teams. The Royal Armed Forces station powerful concentrations of fleets and armies at strategic points in the Kingdom's star clusters so that in the event of an attack they can soon respond with overwhelming force. It should be noted that there is no large distinction made into various service branches such as an army or navy. For example field officers could command ground operations as well as starships with Fleets being the basic organizational unit, with each fleet consisting of warships and land forces led by an Archon and his staff of Subarchs. The RAFI have a total of 220 000 000 active personnel and count 75 space-faring warships from it's two Assault-Carriers with crews and complements of 25 000 crew to many small Patrol Corvettes with 50-man complements. The most numerous ship-class is the Ophean-Class Frigate with a 800-man complement. Some of it's ships are modern but most are of centuries-old classes, albeit very well-maintained.

Accepted

[Lunas Legion]

Quintara would have to debate whether or not to show off her magnum opus or not. Linguistics was her area of study once, and she's still rather knowledgeable on the subject, but she's very much a polymath.

I was afraid of that... I imagine it'd give poor Alojs quite a shock, at least initially. Think of the damage it'd do to the noosphere!

She thinks it's necessary, and believes that someone like Alojs who didn't grow up within the Imperium proper is best suited to understand it.

[Remnants of Exilvania]

Mercy, m'lord...

The Deynai would probably take a protective interest in these weirdos.

Bloody Deynai. Next they're going to start protecting striking workers from shock batons and rifle butts.